Last week, Desoto County, Mississippi put out an arrest warrant for the supposedly dead Tim Dog, citing no evidence proving his death. Prosecutor Steven Jubera, who convicted Tim Dog of grand larceny last year, believes Tim Dog may have faked his death to get out of paying back the many women he defrauded out of thousands of dollars after meeting them on online dating websites.

Among the victims was Esther Pilgrim, a Mississippi resident whose swindling by Tim Dog was the subject of last year's two hour "Dateline NBC" special. She told Memphis CBS affiliate WREG that she's demanding proof of Tim Dog's death, adding "I need a death certificate showing that's he's dead because as far as I'm concerned, he's alive." A private investigator turned up no death certificate and an address that was active through April.

But skepticism regarding Tim Dog's death isn't solely stemming from the people he owes money to. Tim Dog's former Ultramagnetic MCs collaborator Ced Gee refused an invitation to speak at Tim Dog's funeral after his family couldn't produce a death certificate, and believes the subsequent funeral never happened.

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Speculation regarding Tim Dog's death began in early April on an edition of Conspiracy Worldwide Radio when host Nasir Montana offered his condolences on Tim Dog's passing to other fellow Ultramagnetic MCs Kool Keith and TR Love. The condolences elicited some giggles from the two, with Keith saying "it is what it is" and TR saying "there's more to the story" and "no comment." Later, when Conspiracy Radio attempted to call the number they had for Tim Dog, someone answered before saying "Who is this?" and hanging up. The next day, they discovered the number had been disconnected.

Along with being the current frontrunner for the strangest hip-hop story of the year, there's a certain irony in Tim Dog potentially being the first rapper proven to fake his death. Being Tim's often the rapper first-credited with kicking off the east-coast west-coast feud with his 1991 single "Fuck Compton," the fact that Tupac's fake death rumors persisted for years while Tim Dog is (allegedly) the one rapper who actually pulled it off is something straight outta O. Henry.

If Tim Dog truly is alive, it's likely nobody will be happier than producer/MC/hip-hop historian and unofficial chairman of the Tim Dog appreciation movement, J-Zone. At first jokingly tweeting "Tim Dog is alive????!!!!!! So does that mean that box set I bought loses value?" he later shared images of texts with his father, celebrating Tim Dog's "genius" before ultimately tweeting "People hitting me up looking for a reaction to Tim Dog being alive. For the 1st time ever, I have no response to a Tim Dog-related matter."